Category Archives: Politics

It’s not like he threw me in front of the Metro train as he did poor Zoe Barnes. But I feel a little bit of what it’s like to be witheringly dismissed by Francis J. Underwood, the ruthless politician at the heart of Netflix’ hit “House of Cards.” It was at the unveiling of a [...]

So much of politics is pageantry, and rarely is it in play as much as at the annual Jefferson Jackson Day dinner in Des Moines the year before a Presidential Election. If the caucuses in Iowa is the first test of the presidential primaries, then, for the Democrats, the JJ Dinner is the place where [...]

Presidential debates so far this cycle have brought cable news networks their biggest ratings in years, but also on the Republican side, some changes to the formats. Not just in breaking the large field into two tiers, but in changing the format that would have prevented, say, CNN moderator Candy Crowley from correcting a matter [...]

I expected another benign array of American dates, names and artifacts when the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History opened its new Innovation Wing last week. Zippier display cases, sure. A greater emphasis on interactive materials, well, that’s just what the times demand to wrest kids from staring at their phones. But a wholesale change in [...]

I had the author of “Reading Lolita in Tehran” on the line. Azar Nafisi was about to receive the 2015 Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate in the Humanities and Public Service from the Smithsonian Associates and Creative Foundation. So I felt I had to ask her about the recent announcement that the U.S. and Iran had reached [...]

As the Comedy Central news/comedy division remains in transition, “Last Week with John Oliver” has turned into a solid work of weekly political satire. In addition to a comedy staff, he’s hired investigative reporters to put out longer-form reports and rants that shift tones heavily between hard-hitting facts and silly asides (usually through bringing in [...]

They’ve been telling you the results for weeks now (instead of informing voters on who they might choose), so it’s natural that Midterm Election Coverage begins two hours before any polls close on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. Al Jazeera America and Bloomberg and PBS wait until 7 p.m., at least; with Fox Business weighing [...]

If the vivid subjects of “The Roosevelts” (PBS, 8 and 10 p.m., check local listings) dominated the White House for 19 of the first 45 years of the 20th century, they dominate the whole of public television this week, with Ken Burns latest historical opus, a 14-hour, seven day miniseries that will repeat its two [...]

Demi Lovato begins her 28-city arena tour Saturday in Baltimore, but she looked a little more nervous facing 1,700 advocates in a hotel ballroom as part of the National Alliance for Mental Illness annual convention Thursday in Washington. Lovato, 22, the pop star who we’ve watched grow up alongside such fearsome figures as Barney the [...]

Among the specials marking the 40th anniversary of the resignation of Richard Nixon, you might have heard that it took a long while for Watergate as a crime to make any traction. As difficult as it was for the Washington Post’s investigations to be picked up by other newspapers, it was even less likely to [...]